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I now have access to broadband from either Comcast Cable or Centurytel DSL, until recently the Centurytel DSL only had 1 tier at $49.95/mo and you could get a $5/mo discount if you also get their local EasyPlan phone service that is $39.95/mo which includes local and all phone options, like caller ID, call waiting, voice mail, etc. Comcast cable charges $42.95/mo for cable internet and if you also own your own modem, add $3/mo to lease your modem or $57.95/mo without cable tv service and you own your own modem, however you do qualify for the cheaper rate by just taking limited basic cable at $8.xx/mo for a total of $51.xx/mo or $52.xx/mo.

Now things have appeared to change at CeturyTel, they are now offering 3 tiers of DSL service, Fast 256K/128K* for $34.95/mo, Faster 768K/256K* for $44.95/mo and Fastest 1.5M/256K* at $54.95/mo and the $5/mo discount is applied to all three tiers when you get the EasyPlan phone service and both Centurytel and Comcast have new customer discounts for the first 2 or 3 months, so I could get the Fast tier for only $29.95/mo regular price with EasyPlan. With these new DSL prices who needs cable tv and cable internet bundling to get the best deals. How do these speeds compare to cable internet?

I would say it depends on your location and how the cable and DSL systems are configured. Where I live I had cable for a year because DSL wasn't available at the time. I had nothing but problems because the cable company simply would not put in the infrastructure to make it reliable. Granted, I live in a suburb that isn't as densely populated as the city. But our cable internet service was out-of-commission at least 2 days a week. When it was working, during the daytime the speed was great, but after about 3pm until about 1am, a dialup modem was faster, literally, I tested it. A technician who came out on one of the many trips told me that they had only two "nodes" which served the entire county, so that advertised blazing speed was shared by a LOT of users. And that's also why it was so unreliable, one of those nodes crashes and there goes half the county. Their "tech support" was a joke, average wait time on hold to get to speak to someone was 45 minutes. I waited for 1 hour, 17 minutes once (on speakerphone). And even then the most they would do, even though you knew the problem was their system was down, they'd want you to reboot, power off the modem, etc. etc.

Finally, the phone company made DSL available to me, I switched and have never been sorry. I get a CONSISTENT speed, regardless of the time of day. I get tech support that answers the phone within a few minutes and actually knows what they're doing. I have only had one outage in the last 2 years, and that lasted less than one day. I've heard that the cable company is doing better these days, but after that taste I had, I'm leary of biting.

I am currently getting dial-up for Free through the University that my wife teaches at and for the most part is not to bad service for dial up, going from $0/mo to $52/mo is not an attractive thought. I rarely download large files at home so the low cost of DSL is attractive to me, for $30 - $35/mo I could get about 5x faster speed then dial up, constant speed since it is DSL and a always on connection keeping my phone line free, makeing it a good compromise between Free dial up and $52/mo cable. DSL may be slower then cable but would satisfy my needs just fine and would do it for $15 - $22/mo cheaper then cable,

If your use is mainly web surfing, e-mail and occasional downloads than what is just barely entry level broadband should work fine for you. Speeds of 1.5M and above are helpful for things like video and very large downloads. One thing to consider is that DSL is dependent on wire distance to your local phone company. I agree with the above advice that you should check out DSL reports. Chances are though that once you get used to even low end broadband you'll never want to use even free analog access again.

I've got cable internet at home and dialup here at the office. Four computers networked at home and two here at the office. Unless my son is downloading a huge file, like a wrestling video, you can't really tell you are sharing at home. Here at the office if my secretary and I are online at the same time I sometimes think my computer has frozen. Paying ATT $14.95 a month for the dialup, along with long distance at 7 cents a minute, and $35 a month at home for Cox, along with tv and phone.

I have SBCYahoo! DSL (1.5M/256k) and pay $29.95 a month, Charter has a package thats about the same speed (1.2M/256K) and they want $44.95 a month with cable.

It all depends on your area, I would think cable would have faster speeds, but you might not want to pay it. Or the speeds on some packages could be just about the same (with me, around here) and one could cost alot more. In all, call the cable company (or check the site) and ask what speed(s) they offer.

Avoid CenturyTel. It's SLOOWWWWWW (1208 is the fastest I've seen and the fastest on DSLReports seems to be under 1300). They block ICMP (no pings or tracerts). There are times it hardly works at all. Back when you COULD ping there were times I'd see pings over 1000ms (usually late at night, oddly enough). Admittedly, I haven't seen that in quite a long time. Still, for a new subscriber, cable is new and can't be much worse than CenturyTel. Avoid CenturyTel. Seriously. You're not allowed to send OR RECIEVE emails with "hello" "hi" or "test" for the subject line (this is brand new and is said to be for MyDoom. Even if it is for MyDoom, I bet they'll be blocking it long after MyDoom is gone. They're still blocking pings to stop worms long gone. hello or hi is used for half the subject lines of all email worldwide I'd bet. At least for half the email I get on my webmail account (I don't even bother using their mailserver...).).

Avoid CenturyTel. It's SLOOWWWWWW (1208 is the fastest I've seen and the fastest on DSLReports seems to be under 1300). They block ICMP (no pings or tracerts). There are times it hardly works at all. Back when you COULD ping there were times I'd see pings over 1000ms (usually late at night, oddly enough). Admittedly, I haven't seen that in quite a long time. Still, for a new subscriber, cable is new and can't be much worse than CenturyTel. Avoid CenturyTel. Seriously. You're not allowed to send OR RECIEVE emails with "hello" "hi" or "test" for the subject line (this is brand new and is said to be for MyDoom. Even if it is for MyDoom, I bet they'll be blocking it long after MyDoom is gone. They're still blocking pings to stop worms long gone. hello or hi is used for half the subject lines of all email worldwide I'd bet. At least for half the email I get on my webmail account (I don't even bother using their mailserver...).).

Thanks MarkA for the warning. Which CenturyTel market are you in? I wander if all CenturyTel area's are the same, I am disappointed to hear this because I was looking for a broadband alternative to CoNcast, oh well.